So after running into a lady in the park shooting with a lightsphere and hearing her good comments about it, I decided to get one myself. Here is a review of it:

Build quality- I was impressed by the material. I was expecting a rigid plastic construction, but it is actually a rubbery gel type construction. This is good because you are not going to break it and it could be folded up inside your camera bag to take up significantly less room. The top cover is more rigid and made out of a plastic. The downside to construction was that it doesn’t stay on the flash unit as tight as one would want. The lady I met in the park with her lightsphere actually had hers taped on with black electrical tape because she was tired of it falling off. Mine doesn’t fall of freely yet, but she has had hers for a couple of years.

Image Quality- I must say that I am really blown away here. Gary Fong is a much better photographer than I am so I figured that he was manipulating shot settings to try to improve the before and after shots. Seeing how I got very similar results to his, I don’t believe that he manipulated anything at all.

I’ll warn you, I am about the ugliest model imaginable especially after I was ran over by a car while I was out cycling, but I couldn’t get my toddle to sit still for test shots. Here are the pictures. All shots were taken with a Canon Rebel XT/350D with the 50/1.8 II lens and a 430EX. F/2.8 1/60” ISO100, and auto white balance

Direct flash

Bounce flash aimed straight up

Bounce flash aimed 45 degree’s towards me

With Lightsphere Cloud

All in all I am quite impressed and for $40US, I can live with it being a little loose fitting especially with the IQ results I am getting. It is a little large for me to want to take out street shooting, but it would be great at friend’s weddings, birthday parties, as well as for fill in flash outside around the park or at home. I will probably pick up a Sto-Fen diffuser for general walk around stuff at some point when I have another item I want to order on line to share the shipping costs. On a 1-5 scale I would rate it a 4.5 only taking off for the fact that it fits a little on the loose side.

i have just won an ebay bid on a nikon SB600 with a Gary Fong Diffuser,

heres the pic of the diffuser...

Now ive never used a diffuser, and reading many reviews about them not being that good?
Can anyone give any simple advise to a newbie on what i should do with it? or is it worth anything if i dont want it?